Zachary Lazar talks to Mary Jo Bang about her radical translation of Dante’s Inferno: in an attempt to render the shock Dante caused by writing in conversational Italian rather than the conventional Latin, Bang translated Dante’s text in modern-day English adorned with references to American pop culture. A sample of the text is available online.
A Transformative Translation
Multiple Personas
If all you associate Ingmar Bergman with is moody chess games and dead doves, it’s time to add “novelist” to the list.
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“Binders Full of Women”
Mitt Romney’s debate remark about where he finds women when he needs to fill some jobs has inspired hundreds of witty product reviewers on Amazon.
Utne Reader Controversy
The Utne Reader offices are moving from Minneapolis to Topeka, and the magazine’s not taking any current employees with it.
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Music and Lyrics
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Poetry and Joy
“I really do hate the idea that black joy itself is a joy derived in spite of. While it may indeed include that, limiting it to such assumes that joy among black people only exists as a defiant response to oppression from white people. I’d rather believe that black folk are capable of this deep supernatural sense without having to be enslaved or disenfranchised.” For the Boston Review, Jericho Brown on poetry and joy.
Challenging the Able-Bodied Gaze
“I hate the idea that you must write every day because I really can’t do that. Sometimes the aching bones in my body will not allow it.” Electric Literature interviews three writers—Keah Brown, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Jillian Weise—about disability, publishing, and accessibility. From our archives: Wang’s 2016 Year in Reading entry.